Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

It was only a matter of moments to reach the corner of the Wool District. The miles Adare had covered on foot melted away beneath the great bird’s wings.

“What are we looking for?” Talal shouted, scanning the streets below as they approached.

“Probably something ugly. Kaden and Valyn. Triste. Maybe a fight.” She shook her head, silently urging the bird to go faster. “I don’t know.” Over on the far talon, Annick just leaned out in her harness, an arrow nocked to her bow, face calm, composed, even serene, as though they’d taken to the air simply to enjoy the breeze. Gwenna felt ready to jump off the talon and start running.

As they drew closer to the target, she ran her eyes over the streets below. There was a logic to the city, to the movement of people within it, a pattern that emerged from the thousands of random interactions, a pattern, she realized after a moment, that was being disrupted. At first she thought it was just one street, one inexplicable knot. Then she noticed another, and another: groups of soldiers, Annurians, forcing their way through the avenues and alleyways below.

“They’re not converging on the Wool District,” Talal said, pointing.

Gwenna followed his finger, gritted her teeth, then cursed.

“They’re not searching for someone,” she said. “They’re chasing them.”

They banked slightly, as though Jak were preparing for a slow, high circle. Gwenna yanked on the straps instead, a series of vicious tugs. A moment later, the bird tucked his wings in closer, and they began to drop.

“You have them?” Talal asked.

Gwenna pointed to a low stone building half a mile off. She couldn’t articulate what she was seeing, the precise nature of the pattern, the convergence of dozens of factors, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t see it. “They’re there. Kaden and the rest of them. That’s where the soldiers are headed.”

“How do you want to make the grab?”

Gwenna grimaced. “We’re going to have put the bird down. You get the girl. I’ll take care of Kaden. Valyn can load his own ass up, while Annick shoots whoever needs shooting. We get ’em on the bird, get ’em up, and then we can figure out what the fuck’s going on.”

She was signaling to Quick Jak even as she spoke. Allar’ra dipped his head, and they were descending, coasting down the air’s invisible slope, then leveling off just above the tallest rooftops. It was easy to forget, when you were five thousand feet off the deck, just how fast the kettral really were. Ten feet above the rooftops, however, that speed was suddenly, gut-wrenchingly obvious. Tiles, chimneys, and shingles smeared to a blur beneath their feet. Gwenna fixed her eyes on the blocky skyline, waiting to make the turn.

She caught just a glimpse of them: Kaden and Triste running side by side, Valyn a few paces ahead, his axes naked and bloody in his hands, and then, while the bird was still forty feet up, something hard and viciously strong slammed into its side.

Gwenna’s world went upside down, turned right side up, and then she was hanging in her harness, twisting as the wind tore at her. The bird was screaming, Talal was tangled in his straps, while over on the far talon, Annick was trying to drag herself back into something resembling proper position.

“Another bird,” Gwenna shouted, as she got her feet under her, craning her head in an effort to see past Allar’ra’s wing. “Someone’s got another fucking bird.”

It only made sense, but when she scanned the sky for a second kettral, she found only a few high clouds, smoke drifting from the chimneys, and the wide, unblemished blue. Then, even as she searched, something smashed into the bird again.

“There’s no second kettral,” Talal shouted. “A kenning.” He was stabbing his finger down, not up. “It’s a kenning .”

Gwenna took half a heartbeat to absorb the information.

“New plan,” she said. “We drop-”

Another vicious blow hammered into Allar’ra, smashing him so hard that his right wing grazed the wall of a long stone building, and then they were peeling away to the east.

“Jak, you son of a bitch,” Gwenna cursed.

“He’s right,” Talal shouted, shaking his head. “We’re too easy a target up here.”

“I understand that,” Gwenna spat. “Which is why I need him to put the fucking bird down. We’ll do this on foot.”

She reached for the leather strap, but at some point in the violence it had torn free. Whatever plan she had, there was no way to communicate it to Jak, no way to do anything but hang in the harness and hope that Valyn could get the other two clear of the army somehow, hope that Gwenna’s own bird wouldn’t be slammed straight out of the air, shattered on the streets below. As she twisted in her straps, another blow hit the bird. Allar’ra opened his beak to scream, and then Quick Jak was nudging the creature lower, so low they were skimming along one of the wider city streets, windows and balconies whipping by to either side.

The moments that followed comprised the most terrifying flying of Gwenna’s life. She had no idea where the attacks against Allar’ra were coming from, no idea if they could be blocked or turned aside, no idea of anything, really, except that some leach they couldn’t even see was kicking the living shit out of them. She couldn’t communicate with Jak, but that hardly mattered now. He was doing the only thing he could-getting them low enough to hide, to stay alive.

An adult kettral had a wingspan of at least seventy feet, which didn’t leave much room for flying, even in Annur’s largest streets. Gwenna could feel the creature straining under its own weight, trying to rise above the buildings without fully spreading its wings. And then, when they were just clear of the highest roofs, the leach hit them again, knocking the bird a few paces sideways in the air.

’Ra screamed his rage and frustration. Gwenna had no way of knowing how badly the bird was hurt. That they were still in the air at all seemed like a ’Kent-kissing miracle, one that only an idiot would trust any longer than necessary. Jak seemed to agree. He gave the bird its head, letting it climb for seven or eight powerful wingbeats, and then they fell into another steep glide, ’Ra’s wings tucked halfway back against his sides, the city’s streets rushing up at them all over again. It was desperate flying, getting high enough to keep air speed, then dropping down to hide below the rooflines, soaring through streets so tight than any error meant all of them were going to end up as stains against the side of some tenement or temple. It was madness and genius all at the same time, and it kept them alive.

When they finally burst out of the final street into the wide-open space of Annur’s lower harbor, nothing hit them. Quick Jak guided the bird cautiously higher, then higher still. Nothing.

Gwenna glanced over at Talal. “We safe here?”

The leach spread his hands helplessly. “No idea. I couldn’t do something like that even if the whole world turned to steel.”

Great, Gwenna thought as Jak banked the bird north and west, back toward their improvised command center. An unknown leach of incalculable power who is not on our side.

* * *

Adare felt like a condemned woman climbing to her death as she mounted the stone stairs of the tower. There was no gibbet at the top, of course-just the bare stone with a clear view out to the north, but that view, in its way, was worse than any hangman’s noose. A noose might mean death for a single woman, but the Urghul army that waited-that might spell the doom of all Annur. And that was forgetting all about the disaster she’d left behind, the two brothers she’d abandoned in Kegellen’s tunnels.